Category Archives: News

Hoosier Hills Food Bank (HHFB) is one of 50 food banks nationwide to win a grant through Walmart’s “Fight Hunger. Spark Change.” Campaign. Walmart’s “Fight Hunger. Spark Change,” campaign was a collaborative effort with Feeding America and committed $3 million to provide 50 grants of $60,000 each to the winning food banks.

Hoosier Hills Food Bank’s “PBJ Campaign,” aimed at providing the equivalent of 250,000 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to those in need, received votes online and at one point was only 15 votes ahead. Yet it received enough votes in the final minutes to tie for 44th place. Julio Alonso, Executive Director of HHFB, feels grateful to the community for making it happen. “It went right down to the wire, and with just a few less votes we would have been out of contention. But instead, we edged out communities as big as Atlanta, San Francisco, and Louisville.” The majority of the funds will provide the sandwiches to HHFB’s partner agencies and mobile food pantry program, and the balance will allow the Food Bank to expand it’s retail food collection route by making a part-time driver full-time.

The City of Bloomington Housing and Neighborhood Development Department, or The City of Bloomington Housing and Neighborhood Development Department, or HAND Department, is seeking input from residents on what are the most pressing housing needs. Every five years the City reapplies for funds from the federal government under the Community Development Block Grant Program, which is administered by HUD. The funds are to be used for affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and job creation programs. The grants are awarded to qualified cities and towns and allow for local decision-making for the specific programs that are supported.

In order to be eligible, the grantees are required to get input from a representative population of the community including persons of low and moderate income and non-English speakers. Last week the City of Bloomington mailed surveys to area residents and posted the survey online. The City is also hosting focus group meetings during the month of October. The next community meeting is scheduled for Thursday, October 16, at 6 PM at the library. The topic of this focus group is homelessness.
The surveys must be returned by November 16th. More information and a link to the online survey is available at bloomington.in.gov/hand.

Blomington Transit Bus Service is up and running through the freezing conditions today and all lines are relatively on time and all routes are operating on the normal break schedule-布卢明顿巴士已启动寒冷运行系统,所有的线路都比较准时，都在正常的休息时间表运行.

From the acknowledgments page of City of Bloomington’s Deer Task Force Report:

While the State has exclusive jurisdiction over deer management [IDNR representatives] have worked hard to listen to the concerns of the Task Force and the community to help us develop recommendations that suit the unique needs of Bloomington and Monroe County. And while they never complained about our interminable meetings or endless questions, no doubt Aldo Leopold’s observation that “The real problem of wildlife management is not how we should handle the animals…the real problem is one of human management” rings true…

The decision to define deer populations as stable, healthy, abundant, overabundant, or call them rats with hooves, or nuisance animals, or even the opposite of this such as the quasi-mystical forest denizen deserving of reverence, is to impose a human worldview upon them. And it is the act of managing this worldview that is as important as the decision to contract the sharpshooters of the company White Buffalo to kill the animal in question.

Because there is so much to talk about on the subject of the lethal cull of deer by sharpshooters in Griffy Lake Nature Preserve as well as the change to the city’s municipal code to allow firearms to be discharged with the city limits we’re going to continue this program next week on our 10/14 program. We’ll be joined again by Dave Rollo, Alyce Miller and Sandra Shapshay.

So Part II of To Cull is Kill: The Griffy Lake Nature Preserve Deer Kill next week on Interchange.

Workers at Bloomingfoods are holding a rally today in support of efforts to unionize. Dakota Walker, a Bloomingfoods employee and an active participant in the union organizing drive talks about the purpose of the rally.

Walker said that the rally is about employee empowerment- it’s an effort to make our community stronger. The goal is to enable and protect the rights of the working class of the Bloomingfoods co-op. The Bloomingfoods workers realize that the rally is important in deciding their fate.

The rally is scheduled to begin at the Monroe County Courthouse Square at 5 p.m. and proceed to Bloomingfoods’ near westside store at 316 West Sixth. Participants will then march to Bloomingfoods’ administration offices at 117 South Gentry Street where they will deliver their message to the Board who are scheduled to meet at 6pm.

Walker explained, “There has not been a neutral stance from Bloomingfoods, and now they publicly say that they have been neutral and haven’t caused any trouble when they have.” He said that the rally is an attempt to get Bloomingfoods to step forward and admit to what they have done.

Bloomingfoods administration released their first statement regarding the effort yesterday, stating that the co-operative, fully respects and supports staff’s legal right to organize. It also reads, “Throughout this process, we have been respectful and cooperative—meeting with union representation on a regular basis and refraining from any public comment until we were able to assimilate what we learned from others.” Walker then talks about the current stage of union organizing.

Walker said, “They have not called for a vote yet. It has been going very well, it’s been amazing signing people up who are interested in their rights and exercising their rights. Right now there are a large percentage of people involved, and there will remain a lot of involvement. There’s no fear of not enough people, that’s for sure.”

The organizers must get forty percent of line employees to sign union membership cards before going to the National Labor Relations board to ask for a formal vote by the employees. If fifty percent vote in favor, the Board will then certify the workers bargaining unit and the employer will then be approached to open negotiations for a first collective agreement.

A special joint session will be held between the Brown County commissioners and the Brown County Council on Thursday, October 9th at 2:00pm to address concerns of county residents regarding county finances. WFHB news Director Alycin Bektesh spoke today with a member of the “Concerned Citizens” group Even Werling and brings us this community report.

Workers at Bloomingfoods are holding a rally today in support of efforts to unionize; A recent report from the I.U. School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) addresses local government benchmarks like spending, revenue, property tax base and levies, local option income tax rates and debt; There will be a public educational forum at Indiana University, Bloomington on Monday, October 13 to raise awareness on campus and in the Bloomington community about the current outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa; Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats has introduced a new bill to address possible dangers of “home-grown terrorism” by suspending the Visa Waiver Program for countries that don’t comply with information-sharing practices.

FEATURE
A special joint session will be held between the brown county commissioners and the Brown County council on Thursday, October 9th at 2:00pm to address concerns of county residents regarding county finances. WFHB news Director Alycin Bektesh spoke today with a member of the “Concerned Citizens” group Even Werling and brings us this community report.

CREDITS
Anchors: Casey Kuhn, Chris Martin
Today’s headlines were written by David Murphy, Anson Shupe, and Cathi Norton
The Ins and Outs of Money is produced by Ryan Stacey, and Dan Withered.
Our engineers are Carissa Barrett and Anna Legge.
Our theme music is provided by the Impossible Shapes.
Managing Producer is Joe Crawford.
Executive producer is Alycin Bektesh.